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2-19-99 - The small upper floor is now complete.
As mentioned on the last page, what was I going to do about the oversized, lop-sided circle. I couldn't re-size the floor. I will be putting in a rail system that has to follow a particular path, so that idea was out. The floor sat on top of everything, on one part, it over hanged the arch a little. At another spot it unevenly overlapped the header for the columns. What to do, what to do.
I used the old grapevine trick. Now this still looks a little lop-sided, but it still works. I found that the amount of solder that I had to use, and the sponge I used didn't agree. To make grapevine decorative soldering you need to pile up the solder, and while it's still hot, smoosh it down with a wet sponge. When I smooshed it down, it did go splat, but it took the sponge with it. A new method had to be resolved. I used an pointy denture brush (I got from my father, he's a dentist). The brushed was soaked, and I thwomped it, real fast. It splattered pretty nicely, except for the really sharp points, it came out well. Though I did remove the really sharp points.
The whole project is going to be black, except for the sunset, which will be copper. This new rough looking solder wouldn't look right as either. Copper would be way to shiny, and it would stick out like a sore thumb. Making it black would look like i messed up on the soldering. I chose Jax copper patina. Then I was going to darken it with pewter (but I wanted copper low-lights, that's why the copper went on first). I decided just for the heck of it, what will Novacan black do to it. It was very interesting, it didn't turn gray, but more of a red copper, to brown, to white, to green, black randomly through the area. It gave it an old weathered, antique look. I'll have to experiment with this new idea further (hopefully it doesn't give off too toxic gas).
Total Time: 2 Hours 30 Minutes
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Started on 11-28-98